Never Missing an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity

In some ways, one has to admire how well Hamas has played much of the West. They started the war by committing atrocities, they took and keep hostages, and they are hiding behind their own people. Their strategy seems to be to let the Israelis kill as many civilians as possible until the rest of the world makes them stop. At which point, Hamas will claim the mantle of resistance and cement its control even further. And so far, it seems to be working.

If there is a trap there, Netanyahu has fallen into it. By the time he's finished conducting the war, Israel will be seen just another brutal Middle Eastern state that plays by Hama Rules. There will be no claim of moral authority as the survivor state of the Holocaust. Israel will be seen as just another state willing to massacre tens of thousands of people when it sees fit to do so.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the Arab-American population is doing its best to ensure that, in the long run, everyone will hate them. A lot of them are saying that they will boycott the election because they don’t like Biden‘s position.

If they do that in sufficient numbers to affect the election, then they will be in a situation where the next president (Trump) hates them already (Gruppenführer Miller has a Muslim visa ban ready to go) and the losing side (Democrats) will also hate them.

I don’t know what genius thought up a plan to get everyone to hate them, but it seems that Abba Eban was right: They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

News That Doesn't Fit the Narrative

Following a 17-day visit to Israel, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict reported on Monday that she and a team of experts had found “clear and convincing information” of rape, and sexualized torture being committed against hostages seized during the 7 October terror attacks.

Pramila Patten added in a press release issued along with the report, that there are also reasonable grounds to believe that such violence, which includes other “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”, may be continuing against those still being held by Hamas and other extremists in the Gaza Strip.

The report from her Office, arose from an official visit to Israel at the invitation of the Government, which included a visit to the occupied West Bank, between 29 January and 14 February.

In the context of the coordinated attack by Hamas and others of 7 October, the UN mission team found that there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred in multiple locations, including rape and gang rape in at least three locations in southern Israel.

The team also found a pattern of victims, mostly women, found fully or partially naked, bound and shot across multiple locations which “may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence”.

I am not minimizing what Israel is has done and is doing in Gaza. Far from it.

Americans, though, should keep this in mind. Following 9-11, we invaded and occupied a country that had nothing to do with 9-11. A completely fictitious case was made to support that invasion. A million people in that country, give or take, were killed. Several million were displaced from their homes. Instability still goes on there. Terrorists took over part of the country, for a time.

Americans committed war crimes, large and small. And has anybody been held to account for that? No one, other than some junior enlisted prison guards. All of the architects of that invasion have been enjoying their cushy retirements.

When adjusted for the relative sizes of the two countries, Israel took a far harder punch on 10-7 than America did on 9-11, to which was added the lagniappe of sexual violence perpetrated by the terrorists. Americans who can't understand why Israel may have lost its collective mind after October 7th are demonstrating blatant hypocrisy. (And so are those countries who sent troops to help America trash the aforementioned country, including, but by no means limited to, Great Britain, Australia, Italy, Poland, Spain, Holland, and so on.)

This is What the Iraq War Got the CIA

U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed that Hamas and another Gaza terrorist organization were using al-Shifa Hospital as a command center, according to newly declassified material.

The U.S. intelligence indicates that the hospital was made a legitimate target thanks to the maze of tunnels and rooms constructed beneath it for terrorist use, the New York Times reported. The Israeli military came under heavy criticism for its military offensive against the hospital in November.

A senior U.S. intelligence official told the Times that not only did Hamas use it as a command post, but they also used it to detain "at least a few hostages."

"The U.S. Intelligence Community is confident in its judgment on this topic and has independently corroborated information on HAMAS and PIJ’s use of the hospital complex for a variety of purposes related to its campaign against Israel," the declassified material stated, according to the Associated Press. Those uses, it said, included "to house command infrastructure, exercise certain command and control activities," and store weapons.

I am inclined to believe it, though I am mindful that the American intelligence agencies lied through their teeth about the justification for the Iraq War. There were no mobile biological warfare labs, no centrifuge tubes, no WMDs, and no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. All lies and, at best, half-truths put out to justify a war of aggression. (For which nobody's been held to account.)

Maybe they're right about this. But still, once a thieving cocksucker, always a thieving cocksucker.

Israel's Reaction to the Hamas Attack of 10/7/2023 and A Look Back to 9/11/2001

I have read and seen a lot of stuff in the paper, on the TV and online decrying Israel's pummeling of Gaza. So let's take a short trip down memory lane, shall we?

2,977 people were killed in the 9/11 attack. Many more died as a result of cleaning up the debris of the World Trade Center.[1] In the aftermath, we not only drove the Taliban out of Afghanistan,[2] we invaded and defeated another country that had nothing to do with 9/11.[3]

The casualty figures of that misbegotten invasion are disputed. But it is safe to say that hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed. When "excess deaths" are computed, the butcher's bill is likely around a million or so.

A million people, all innocent, who were killed because we invaded a country based on no good goddamn reason, other than Darth and Chimpy wanted to do it. Besides that. two million or so people fled the country as refugees. Two million more were displaced internally, "internal refugees" if you will.

Not to mention that more Americans were killed there than who died on 9/11/01. The arrogance of American mercenaries resulted in a brutal battle that levelled a city.[4] The actions of soldiers guarding a prison became a further stain on American honor.[5]

A country that was a counterweight to Iran became, more or less, an Iranian puppet state. Terrorists took over a portion of the country, necessitating even more military involvement.[6]

All of that, the entire parade of horribles, came from American overreaction to 9/11. The reverberations from that overreaction will persist for decades to come. The consequences of that overreaction have been largely met with a collective shrug by the American people.[7], [8] So it's not as though we are standing on high ground when we criticize Israel's war against Gaza.
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[1] Most of those because of their own obstinacy. Though advised to wear respiratory protection, most refused. While at the Pentagon cleanup, which was a military project, the workers were ordered to wear respiratory protection and, as a result, the incidence of respiratory problems was very low.
[2] Temporarily.
[3] Iraq.
[4] The Battle of Mosul.
[5] Abu Ghraib Prison.
[6] ISIS.
[7] Though the senior members of the Bush Administration have since been scrupulously avoiding foreign travel in order to avoid being arrested on war crimes charges.
[8] A number of other countries also participated for their own reasons. So they own a piece of this, too.